Monday, August 24, 2009

Mashiko : 益子

decided to take the family car for a bit of a burn.our destination; mashiko town (益子町) in tochigi prefecture (栃木県)... some 200km away.thank god for japanese car navigation systems!all i had to do was input some simple details and then a lovely lady told me when to turn, when to take care of merging traffic, and when to turn on my lights when it got dark.i was expecting her to tell me when to take a toilet stop too! although she did tell me once it was time for a quick rest...

so why the heck did we go to mashiko?for it's pottery of course!(man that sounds geeky...)

so yeah, mashiko is well known for its pottery known as mashiko-yaki (益子焼).it's a small town jam-packed with pottery shops, some great galleries and relaxing cafes.we spent the day here rummaging through the shops where we picked up some beautiful handcrafted goodies to take back to hong kong.a lot of the stuff is very "traditional" and very "pottery..." which i'm not really into, but if you dig, there is treasure to be found.

2 comments:

never been to tochigi prefecture...but if you're a fan of pottery... have you been to the little town of Seto? It's in Nagoya. Apparently it's famous for pottery. I lived close by but didn't go very often since all i did in japan was to stuff my face and not look at pottery. lol

* Luuworldum no, i can't say i have ever been to seto...i'm not a huge fan of ceramics but i must say there was some pretty cool stuff in mashiko. some tredy cafes too for such a small town (where you could always "stuff your face"!)